Farming background
BIOGEN’s parent company, The Bedfordia Group, and its founders, the Ibbett family, have been part of the agricultural community since the 1930's.
Both Bedfordia and the Ibbetts have become well known and respected UK farmers - especially in Bedfordshire and the surrounding counties. They established and registered their own Bedfordia pedigree pig herd back in the early 1940s and were the first UK farm in 1990 to have a UKAS accredited grain testing laboratory.
Today, Bedfordia Farms currently turns over £3.5m per year and is organised into three divisions: arable, grain services and livestock.
Arable
Bedfordia Farms produces farm assured combinable crops (principally wheat, oilseed rape and barley) from 5,500 acres (2000ha) of land using high levels of technology to maximize output in an environmentally sustainable way.
Grain Services
Bedfordia Grain Services has 27,000 tonnes of commercial grain storage and processing capability from a central site in Bedfordshire. This part of the business both trades on the London Futures Market and is a registered futures store.
Livestock
Bedfordia Farms markets 23,000 farm assured finished pigs per year from 1,100 breeding sows across 3 sites. Significant investment has recently been made in a state of the art finishing unit housing 4,800 finishing pigs. It is from this finishing unit that pig slurry is piped to BIOGEN's AD plant.
Bedfordia is committed to following environmental best practices and its farming operations are pioneers in green farming. For example, we have been members of the Countryside Stewardship Scheme since 1999 and are active members of LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming). In 2006 Bedfordia joined the ELS (Entry Level Scheme) which is a whole farm environmental scheme run by Natural England.
